Rafael Nadal reaches his turning point at the Australian Open . With a memorable background of 14 quarter-finals in the last 15 participations, the antepenultimate round of the Aussie tournament is, historically, a usual stopping place for the Spanish tennis player. The 2009 champion has fallen seven times in the quarterfinals at Melbourne Park, where problems multiply when the time comes for Rafa to face him again, in this case in a duel with a dangerous tennis player like Denis Shapovalov.
Nadal ‘s enmity with the quarterfinals of the Australian Open has its starting point in 2007, the first time that the Spaniard crossed the round of 16 in Melbourne. His rival, a Fernando González much more used to hard courts, beat Rafa in three sets and took him away from the dream of fighting for the title. A clear defeat, like the one Nadal was suffering against Andy Murray in 2010, current champion but hampered by knee problems and who ended up retiring just after the third set had begun.
A year later, in 2011, Nadal returned to the quarterfinals, where David Ferrer was waiting for him, undefeated in the season and in top form. This reason and, again, physical problems, in this case in the hamstring, caused an unappealable defeat for Rafa in the derby, in which he yielded by a clear 6-4, 6-2 and 6-3 .
We would have to wait until 2015 to see Rafa lose again in the quarterfinals of the Australian Open , in a journey in which he would reach and fall twice in the final –2012 and 2014– in addition to not being able to participate in 2013. Thomas Berdych , a tennis player ahead of his time with the characteristics of a puncher, would separate Nadal from the semifinals with an almost perfect performance and against which the man from Manacor could do nothing, who was still looking for a second title in the Rod Laver that has not yet arrived .
Nadal’s cruelest defeats
In 2018, what is probably the hardest loss of Nadal ‘s career in Australia would arrive, against Marin Cilic and in a match in which he dominated two sets to one when he began to feel problems in his leg. ” I’m totally lame, my leg has been blocked,” he said, after being forced to withdraw after trying to get back into the game. The withdrawal was followed by a final, in 2019, in which he was clearly surpassed by Djokovic, while in 2020 and 2021 Nadal would see the quarterfinals become an official curse, with two defeats.
First it was Thiem , ultimately the tournament finalist, who beat Nadal in four sets and was clearly superior to the Spaniard in the key moments of the match. In 2021, fate was much crueler with Rafa, who started in an unbeatable way against Tsitsipas but ended up fading, paying for the loss of the third set in the tie-break, and gave in with an extraordinary comeback from the Greek (3-6, 2- 6, 7-6, 6-4, 7-5).
